German Patent Application No. 3,135,271 discloses an infrared-radiation-reflecting flexible multilayer material web in which a support mesh is adhesively bonded on both sides to a textile support web and in which the two textile support webs are each provided on the outside with a metal coating and the metal coatings are provided with a further protective coating. This known material web is distinguished by high thermal reflection with simultaneous vapour permeability. The two metal coatings in the known material web, which is apparently to be used for making insulating blinds as employed in particular for roof windows, are formed as cohesive closed metal layers vapour deposited in vacuum and are therefore completely opaque to light in the visible range, i.e. in the wavelength range between 0.365 and 0.75 .mu.m.
European Patent Publication No. 109,638 discloses a method of making metallized textile sheet structures in which the textile properties of the support are retained in that a metal layer applied to the textile material by either an electroless, wet chemical or vapour deposition method is subsequently thickened by electroplating. The metallized textile web made in this manner has because of its high electrical and thermal conductivity a good heat stability and high reflectivity for incident electromagnetic radiation; it is therefore suitable for example for making flexible screen antennas for radar waves but can also be used in all cases where the carrying away of electrostatic charges or the screening of high-frequency electromagnetic waves is important. These metal layers deposited in electroless manner or electrolytically and thickened by electroplating are also completely impermeable to light in the visible range.
DE No. 3,016,191 discloses a non-inflammable sun protection blind comprising a textile support in the form of a woven fabric, knitted fabric, non-woven fabric or a thread ply sewn fabric whose threads or fibres are impregnated with two different layers of flexible halogen-free plastic, that is a duroplastic and a thermoplastic plastic layer, both plastic layers containing a halogen-free flame-retarding agent. This known sun protection blind is not metal coated; it is thus permeable both to light in the visible range and to radiation of longer wavelength in the near infrared range (0.75-3 .mu.m).
Furthermore, various insulating blinds or insulating blind materials are on the market which in particular are used to keep off excessive solar radiation for roof windows and which are made by laminating a relatively thick aluminium foil to a textile material, the bonding being obtained by an adhesive layer between the metal foil and the textile material. These relatively stiff insulating blinds are also completely impermeable to light in the visible range. It is an object of this invention to provide a metal-coated flexible textile web which has a high reflectivity for infrared radiation in the near IR range between about 0.75 and 3 .mu.m but at the same time has good transmission and translucence properties for light in the visible range between 0.365 and 0.75 .mu.m and in spite of the metal coating on at least one side retains its textile appearance and its textile nature. A further object of the invention is to provide a method for producing such a textile web.
Thus, this invention provides a textile web of the type mentioned at the beginning in that the metal coating is disposed substantially only in the region of the intersections of the threads or fibres of the textile support whilst the regions of the textile support disposed between the intersections are substantially free from the metal coating and thus permeable to light.